Current:Home > MyFinLogic FinLogic Quantitative Think Tank Center|Displaced, repatriated and crossing borders: Afghan people make grueling journeys to survive -Capitatum
FinLogic FinLogic Quantitative Think Tank Center|Displaced, repatriated and crossing borders: Afghan people make grueling journeys to survive
Benjamin Ashford View
Date:2025-04-06 07:35:00
TORKHAM,FinLogic FinLogic Quantitative Think Tank Center Afghanistan (AP) — The barren desert plain among the mountains of eastern Afghanistan is filled with hundreds of thousands of people.
Some live in tents. Others live out in the open, among the piles of the few belongings they managed to take as they were forced from neighboring Pakistan.
The sprawling camp of people returning to Afghanistan through the Torkham border crossing is the latest facet of Afghans’ long, painful search for a stable home.
More than 40 years of war, violence and poverty in Afghanistan have created one of the world’s most uprooted populations. Some 6 million Afghans are refugees outside the country. Another 3.5 million people are displaced within the country of 40 million, driven from their homes by war, earthquakes, drought or resources that are being depleted.
Afghan refugees sit in a camp near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in Torkham Afghanistan, Friday, Nov. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
(AP Graphic)
Over the course of months, an Associated Press photographer traveled across Afghanistan from its eastern border with Pakistan to its western border with Iran, getting to know displaced people and returned refuges and capturing their images.
Afghanistan is already a poor country, especially after the economic collapse that followed the takeover by the Taliban two years ago. More than 28 million people — two-thirds of the population — rely on international aid to survive.
The displaced are among the poorest of the poor. Many live in camps around the country, unable to afford enough food or firewood for heat in the winter. Women and children often turn to begging. Others marry off their young daughters to families willing to pay them money.
In an camp for internally displaced people outside Kabul, it was 15-year-old Shamila’s wedding day. She stood in a bright-red dress among the family’s women, who congratulated her. But the girl was miserable.
Shamila, 15, from an internally displaced family, adjusts her wedding dress in an old mud house yard, on her wedding day, on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, May 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
“I have no choice. If I don’t accept, my family will be hurt,” said Shamila, whose father did not give the family’s name because he feared being identified by the Taliban. Her groom’s family is giving her father money to pay off the debts he’s had to take on to support his wife and children.
“I wanted to study and work, I should have gone to school,” Shamila said. “I have to forget all my dreams … so at least I can help my father and my family a little and maybe I can take the burden off their shoulders.”
Afghan refugees settle in a camp near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in Torkham Afghanistan, Friday, Nov. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Fahimeh, 14, from an internally displaced family, sits on the bed in the room where she got married, on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, May 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Pakistan’s decision earlier this year to deport Afghans who entered illegally struck hard. Many Afghans have lived for decades in Pakistan, driven there by successive wars at home. When the order was announced, hundreds of thousands feared arrest and fled back to Afghanistan. Often Pakistani authorities prevented them from taking anything with them, they say.
Their first stop has been the camp in Torkham, where they might spend days or weeks before Taliban officials send them to a camp elsewhere. With little food and little to protect them from the mountain cold, many in the camp are sick.
An internally displaced woman takes care of her sick child in a camp on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023. She has no money to treat her sick child. Since the chaotic Taliban takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, an already war-devastated economy once kept alive by international donations alone is now on the verge of collapse. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
In one corner of the camp at the foot of a mountain, 55-year-old Farooq Sadiq sat among some of his belongings, wrapped in cloth, with his wife and children on the ground beside them. Sadiq said he had been living in the Pakistani city of Peshawar for 30 years and owned a home there. Now they had nothing, not even a tent, and had been sleeping on the ground for the past eight nights.
“I have nothing in Afghanistan, no house, no place to live, not enough money to buy a house,” he said. He hopes to settle somewhere in Afghanistan and get a visa to Pakistan so he can go sell his home there to use the money for his family.
The expulsions from Pakistan have swelled the already large numbers of Afghans who try to migrate into Iran, hoping to find work.
Afghan refugees wait to register in a camp near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in Torkham, Afghanistan, Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Every month, thousands cross into Iran at the border near Zaranj. It’s a risky route: In the dark of night, with the help of smugglers, they clamber over the border wall using ladders and jump down the other side.
Mostly young men, from 12 to their 20s, use this route, planning to work in Iran and send money home to their families. Many are caught by Iranian border guards and sent back.
The other way is longer — a drive by car for hours to Afghanistan’s southwest border, where they cross into Pakistan to make their way to its border with Iran, passing through mountains and deserts. In Pakistan, fighters from the Sunni militant group Jundallah often attack the migrants, killing or kidnapping Shiites among them.
Afghan refugees sit in the back of a truck to go to Iran through the desert after crossing the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the outskirts of Zaranj city, Afghanistan, Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
An Afghan refugee rests in the desert next to a camp near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Tents stand in a migrant camp at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
An Afghan refugee girl stands for a portrait in a camp near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in Torkham, Afghanistan, Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
An Afghan refugee woman returns to Afghanistan through the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Torkham, Afghanistan, Friday, Nov. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
An internally displaced man who lost one of his legs during a suicide attack at the Kabul airport, walks in a camp on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Feb 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Young Shiite Afghan immigrants treck towards the the Iran-Afghanistan border wall in the desert around the city of Zaranj, Afghanistan, near the the Iran-Afghanistan border wall, to try to cross over the Iranian border wall into Iran, Monday, Dec. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Young Shiite Afghan immigrants wait for midnight in ruins in the desert around the city of Zaranj, Afghanistan, near the the Iran-Afghanistan border wall, to try to cross over the Iranian border wall into Iran, Monday, Dec. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
veryGood! (7219)
Related
- Travis Hunter, the 2
- Watch: Pipeline explosion shoots flames 500 feet high, reportedly seen in three states
- `This House’ by Lynn Nottage, daughter and composer Ricky Ian Gordon, gets 2025 St. Louis premiere
- Julia Fox's Daring New E! Fashion Competition Show Will Make You Say OMG
- Costco membership growth 'robust,' even amid fee increase: What to know about earnings release
- 'Black joy is contagious': Happiness for Black Americans is abundant, but disparities persist
- US jobs report for January is likely to show that steady hiring growth extended into 2024
- 'Blindspot' podcast offers a roadmap of social inequities during the AIDS crisis
- In ‘Nickel Boys,’ striving for a new way to see
- Mississippi House passes bill to legalize online sports betting
Ranking
- North Carolina justices rule for restaurants in COVID
- Duke Energy seeks new ways to meet the Carolinas’ surging electric demand
- Heidi Klum’s NSFW Story Involving a Popcorn Box Will Make You Cringe
- Arkansas police chief arrested and charged with kidnapping
- Juan Soto to be introduced by Mets at Citi Field after striking record $765 million, 15
- Pilot error likely caused the helicopter crash that killed 2 officers, report says
- US center’s tropical storm forecasts are going inland, where damage can outstrip coasts
- Tennessee Gov. Lee picks Mary Wagner to fill upcoming state Supreme Court vacancy
Recommendation
Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Hi Hi!
Who could replace Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes? 5 potential candidates for 2025
Move to strip gender rights from Iowa’s civil rights law rejected by legislators
Halle Bailey Reveals How She and Boyfriend DDG Picked Baby's Name
The 401(k) millionaires club keeps growing. We'll tell you how to join.
Microdosing is more popular than ever. Here's what you need to know.
Activists renew push to repeal Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban
NCAA recorded nearly $1.3 billion in revenue in 2023, putting net assets at $565 million